Reccomendations on which program(s) to use for 8 yr. old

[frazelle09]

i'm trying to help an 8 year old friend get started in learning programming.  i want to take over an old PCL box i've got lying around and install a newer version of PCL (the 2013 one - lol) and maybe even take him through the installation steps.  He's already got a monitor, which is good 'cause i don't have any extra lying about.

He says he would like to be able to program some simple games he can show his friends and i'm also interested in staying with Open Source and Linux oriented.  Uh, my only programming experience was way back when when i tried working with the programmable TI calculators and some VERY basic BASIC programming.  As you might have calculated, that was some 30 years ago - sigh.

So, any comments/suggestions would be of great help.

Have a great evening!  -- i hope this is the correct forum for this request...

[Crow]

That seems like a question for Longtom Jr. maybe he see this thread, or you could send him a PM

[Just17]

http://scratch.mit.edu/

....  and it is in the repository  

kturtle is also in the repo ...

[frazelle09]

Just17, thanks!  i've been looking at scratch's website and it looks really complete.  Will this be something the child will be able to use to learn other languages?

Thanks again for your suggestions and have a great morning! 

[Just17]

The RaspberryPi is aimed at kids and education, and they use Python as the programming language as well as Scratch ......  so I suspect there will be a lot of useful stuff available that could be used on a PC - for a kid to learn Python.

That is how I understand it ...

http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/tag/python

http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/Raspberry_Pi_Education_Manual.pdf

[Just17]

Here is a resource which you might find useful

http://www.scratch.ie/resources

It is aimed specifically at Irish kids, but I am sure it is easily adapted 

[menotu]

+1 for The RaspberryPi

Mebbe the youngster could save his "pocket money" - or do "chores" - to buy his very own RaspberryPi

[Just17]

I got my hands on my first Pi yesterday 

Discovered I did not have an SDHC card ....  so gotta get one with fast r/w speeds
Think I might buy a case for it too. (I don't have any Leggo sets and my old Meccano sets do not seem to be suitable  )

I don't even know what I might end up using it for    ....  it was a late delivered Xmas pressie 

[The Chief]

i'm trying to help an 8 year old friend get started in learning programming. 

So, any comments/suggestions would be of great help.

First steps first.  The quickest and easiest would be bash scripts.  Here's an excellent site, although it may be a bit above most 8 year olds.

http://maketecheasier.com/write-linux-shell-scripts/2011/06/30

[ibi]

Have a look at the book "Hello World: Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners" by Warren and Carter Sande. It's a very thorough book on Python (nearly 400 pages), but it's written at a kid's level. It shouldn't be too hard for an eight-year-old, after he's had a go with Scratch, and particularly if he really wants to learn Python. I'm using the book myself to learn Python 

The book is recent enough to still be stocked by Barnes & Noble. So if you have one nearby, you can probably leaf through a copy to see whether it would be suitable for him.

It gets into games fairly early on, but you have to install Pygame, which is easy enough.